Stricken cruise ship - who's to blame?

The disaster in the Mediterranean of the capsized cruise ship is filling the headlines.

The Captain says his charts were out of date and incomplete, and that he is a hero for saving so many lives by sailing his ship closer to the shore so they could be rescued more easily, when clearly so many more could have been lost.

Observers, most of whom admittedly are not nautically trained and were looking at what was happening in the dark, say that the ship was too close to the shore before the accident and therefore the Captain is negligent in that he was disobeying the charts and not observing good practice just to give his passengers a good view of what is apparently a very pretty island. But in the dark - surely not? An electric light shining out of the inky blackness of a Mediterranean winter's night looks pretty much the same everywhere.

Passengers are saying that their safety briefings were not timely, and that maritime law says a briefing only has to be held within 24 hours of embarking. Well, that's about as much use as a chocolate teapot! What if something happens within the first 24 hours, as in this case? That ship was carrying over 4,000 people, and only a tiny proportion had received any kind of safety instructions. Lifebelts were stowed in cabins but don't appear to have been anywhere else, or at least not obviously so. Even the crew have admitted that they were not trained in evacuation procedures when the ship was listing so badly that almost half of the lifeboats could not be used - they are only trained for evacuation from a level vessel!

Some one is negligent here, and from what I can gather from what I have read, it probably isn't the Captain, although he is the obvious scapegoat. The company's procedures seem to be woefully inadequate, passengers and crew alike totally unprepared and the equipment provided, whether charts, lifebelts or lifeboats, inappropriately stored, maintained and inaccessible. So far, it has been established that eleven people have died and I have no doubt that there will be more. This seems to me to be a clear case for a corporate manslaughter charge.

Do they have that in Italy? This was an Italian ship, with an Italian crew and a large proportion of Italian passengers, although there do appear to have been a fair few Brits as well. It has sunk in Italian waters, so it is not unreasonable to expect that any enquiries or a trial, should it come to that, will also be held in Italy.

Whatever happens, those poor people have been so traumatised that they will probably never set foot on a boat again. I can see the legal cases rumbling on and on, and the lawyers rubbing their hands.

They say that cruising is one of the safest forms of travel, but personally I have an in built fear of water (I get panicky in a deep bath!) and can't swim, so you wouldn't catch me on one of the things even before this. I'll stick to planes any time!